back from his rustication:  alas, I am by no means certain that it will make a new man of him, nor, in fact, that the whole of this amendatory programme will get itself performed to equal satisfaction!  But you must write to me at once if it is not so; and done it shall be in spite of human stupidity itself.  Note, withal, these things:  Chapman sends no Books to America except through Field & Co.; he does not regularly send a Box at the middle of the month; but he does “almost monthly send one Bog”; so that if your monthly Volume do not start from London about the 15th, it is due by the very next Chapman-Field box; and if it at any time don’t come, I beg of you very much to make instant complaint through Field & Co., or what would be still more effectual, direct to myself.  My malison on all Blockheadisms and torpid stupidities and infidelities; of which this world is full!—­

Your Letter had been anxiously enough waited for, a month before my departure; but we will not mention the delay in presence of what you were engaged with then. Faustum sit; that truly was and will be a Work worth doing your best upon; and I, if alive, can promise you at least one reader that will do his best upon your Work.  I myself, often think of the Philosophies precisely in that manner.  To say truth, they do not otherwise rise in esteem with me at all, but rather sink.  The last thing I read of that kind was a piece by Hegel, in an excellent Translation by Stirling, right well translated, I could see, for every bit of it was intelligible to me; but my feeling at the end of it was, “Good Heavens, I have walked this road before many a good time; but never with a Cannon-ball at each ankle before!” Science also, Science falsely so called, is—­But I will not enter upon that with you just now.

The Visit to America, alas, alas, is pure Moonshine.  Never had I, in late years, the least shadow of intention to undertake that adventure; and I am quite at a loss to understand how the rumor originated.  One Boston Gentleman (a kind of universal Undertaker, or Lion’s Provider of Lecturers I think) informed me that "the Cable" had told him; and I had to remark, “And who the devil told the Cable?” Alas, no, I fear I shall never dare to undertake that big Voyage; which has so much of romance and of reality behind it to me; zu spat, zu spat. I do sometimes talk dreamily of a long Sea-Voyage, and the good the Sea has often done me,—­in times when good was still possible.  It may have been some vague folly of that kind that originated this rumor; for rumors are like dandelion-seeds; and the Cable I dare say welcomes them all that have a guinea in their pocket.

Thank you for blocking up that Harvard matter; provided it don’t go into the Newspapers, all is right.  Thank you a thousand times for that thrice-kind potential welcome, and flinging wide open your doors and your hearts to me at Concord.  The gleam of it is like sunshine in a subterranean place.  Ah me, Ah me!  May God be with you all, dear Emerson.